Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-13-Speech-1-033-000"
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"en.20120213.14.1-033-000"2
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"Mr President, as we speak, more than 600 people have died in Europe, victims of the cold and, above all, isolation.
This is an opportunity to remember that Europe is not just about economics and finance. It is first and foremost about solidarity, and the spell of cold weather affecting our people is an opportunity for us to prove it.
Yet what are we seeing? Food supplies for European food aid programmes are at their lowest and here we have called for help for the NGOs in charge of them. Some EU countries have taken these programmes hostage and have only renewed them until 2013, using legal problems as an excuse.
We are also seeing that not enough is being done in response to the real scandal of food waste. I am referring here to all that is being thrown away by major supermarket chains every day when we all know that there are organisations that do not have enough food to hand out at the moment.
It is high time that we reacted by putting our support networks into action. Having been mayor of a village for many years, I know that it is at local level that things first play out and I welcome the informal assistance networks that have sprung up over the last few weeks. These are the most effective networks and these are the ones we must support.
We must also react by extending the European food aid programme. It is also high time that we promoted a common energy policy. What, then, are the facts? Today, people in need are having their gas and electricity cut off because they cannot pay their bills. Yet we are reacting much too slowly in all our countries. Here too, we must call for help.
Finally, Mr Barnier, we must update the basic European civil protection project that we are so desperately lacking. We must act to stop the same tragedies and the same emergencies from happening again year after year. We have experienced them and we must be prepared. We must provide our NGOs and our fellow citizens who are dealing with these issues with the necessary means to do so rather than passing them over to large organisations."@en1
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